Aberdeen University workers announce ballot over job cuts

Workers at Aberdeen University announced plans to ballot staff over job cuts on Friday afternoon.

The ballot will ask management to commit to ruling out compulsory redundancies and negotiating with the University and Colleges Union (UCU) over job security.

The university is facing a deficit of £6.5m, and it must make £5.5m worth of savings within this financial year.

University chiefs previously announced that up to 70 jobs could be lost at the institution if it doesn’t raise enough revenue to reduce its £5.5m financial blackhole.

Five schools at the university have been selected for voluntary severance, and STV News understands that the cuts could impact up to 70 jobs.

While university chiefs were sitting in a private senate meeting on Friday, the UCU announced that it would issue a “consultative ballot” to members this month.

The UCU also urged university workers at Aberdeen to join the union and vote for the ballot online by May 27, 2025.

“Schools have been asked to deliver deep cuts to improve financial targets,” a flyer from the UCU said.

“These cuts are being rushed through, without assessing the risks to the university and staff. A voluntary severance/enhanced retirement scheme has already been announced amid concerns about transparency and the validity of data used to target schools.

“Meanwhile, colleagues in professional services, who have already borne the brunt of previous cuts, risk losing further staff through the freeze on recruitment and the revisiting of previous voluntary severance applications.”

Aberdeen Uni’s principal professor previously said the institution is hoping to raise enough revenue to prevent job cuts.

If only half of the university’s £5.5m revenue goal is achieved, Mr Boyne said 35 staff members would need to take either voluntary severance or enhanced retirement

That means that if the university does not raise the desired revenue, then at least 70 roles could be under threat.

The university court, the government body for the university, has until the end of June to plug the financial blackhole.

The University has previously said that it’s a challenging time for higher education, and it is working to address its £5.5m budget gap, which equates to around 2% of its total revenue.

A spokesperson for the institution said the voluntary redundancy scheme would lead to a “small reduction” in the overall size of the total workforce, depending on the take-up of the scheme”.

A University of Aberdeen spokesperson said: “We have a huge amount of high-quality work here at Aberdeen, as evidenced by our consistently outstanding levels of student satisfaction, the strong growth in our research awards and our impressive UK league table rankings and these measures will help to ensure our future financial sustainability.”